When I went back to Austria from LA yesterday, I snapped some pictures
as the plane took off. To my surprise, we had taken off toward the sea -
westbound - and this gave me a great view of the Los Angeles coastline up
to Santa Monica.

The second picture was taken when the pilot brought the plane around
toward its northeastern destination. The trip was extremely uneventful,
with a single exception - the captain uttered these deathless words:

This is the captain speaking, twenty minutes to impact, eh, twenty
minutes to landing.